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Many young people and in particular teenagers, do not understand the potential dangers and long term consequences of ‘sexting’. What may appear to be a flirtatious exchange between a young couple can be viewed as a serious offence in the eyes of the law.

On 17 August 2017 the Government announced the creation of a bill to strengthen the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act) and increase the powers of the Australian Transactions and Reporting Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC).

On 18 October 2017 the NSW Parliament passed new legislation as part of its transformational reforms to the NSW criminal justice system. Dubbed ‘Safety First Reforms’, these changes fundamentally shift the landscape in the criminal justice system.

In Portugal, there has been a shift towards treating drug use as a medical issue, rather than a crime. Under new laws passed in 2001 drug dealers are still sent to prison, but anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug gets mandatory medical treatment, and no jail.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently announced the Federal Government’s new laws that will oblige both telcos and social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to give Australian security agencies access to encrypted messages, to ‘ensure that the rule of law applies online as well as offline’, as stated by Turnbull. Many people are asking whether…

In 2014, Steven Fesus, who was awaiting trial on a murder charge, was granted bail by the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney following a successful application made by his lawyer Dennis Miralis. Community outrage and a media frenzy followed – after all, he’d allegedly confessed to the crime which occurred some 16 years earlier, had…

On occasion, a child may be charged with a crime. A common question that arises in criminal law is how old a person has to be before they can be convicted of an offence. Section 5 of the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 states that no child under the age of 10 can ever be found guilty of an offence. However, there is a common law rule which states that a child between the ages of 10 and 14 also cannot commit a crime unless the Prosecution can prove that the child knew the difference between right and wrong. This rule is known as the common law doctrine of doli incapax.